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In our emails, sent once or twice a week, you'll receive:
• alerts on new threats to Georgia's environment
• opportunities to join other Georgians on urgent actions
• updates on the decisions that impact our environment
• resources to help you create a cleaner, greener future

Go Solar

While more of us are trying to go solar, dirty energy companies keep putting up new roadblocks. We’re urging our leaders to go big on solar and leave dirty energy behind.

It’s time for Georgia to go big on solar power

More of us are going solar, meeting our energy needs in a way that’s clean, local and independent. Consider:

Solar power has tripled in the U.S. in the last two years, with another American family or business going solar every four minutes.

That’s in part because the price of solar has dropped more than 50 percent since 2011.

The chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission said that “solar is growing so fast it is going to overtake everything...It could double every two years.”

Who's attacking solar?

Unfortunately, solar power’s rapid growth has alarmed some dirty energy companies. They keep putting up new roadblocks to solar -- so they can keep solar generating less than 3% of our power, even if it means more pollution and more global warming.

Here are just a few examples:

Charles and David Koch, owners of the oil conglomerate Koch Industries, and their allies have spent heavily to impose new taxes on homeowners who go solar – in effect, penalizing those who reduce their pollution and their carbon footprint.

The Edison Electric Institute, which represents electric utility companies, has teamed up with the American Legislative Exchange Council to dismantle state pro-solar laws in Kansas, North Carolina and Washington State, amid others.

Our report found all or nearly all of the states shared a set of smart policies in common, from strong clean energy standards to policies that let solar homeowners sell their extra power back to the utilities.

15 percent solar by 2030

We need more and better pro-solar policies, not fewer.

That’s why we’re urging Gov. Nathan Deal to make commitments that will help put Georgia on the road to 100% clean energy, with 15 percent solar by 2030.

Achieving this state goal would help move our country closer to the national goal of getting 10 percent solar by 2030. This would produce immediate and long-lasting benefits for our environment, including removing 280 million metric tons of carbon from the atmosphere by 2030—the equivalent of taking 59 million cars off the road.

Let's go big on solar

We think a combination of professional research and advocacy with community action can help Georgia go big on solar. Why? Our national federation has done it before.

Environment California spearheaded the campaign for that state’s Million Solar Roofs Initiative. In Massachusetts, we helped convince the state to set a goal of enough solar to power 50,000 homes – and then persuaded the state to raise the goal when it hit the original milestone ahead of schedule. We’ve also won pro-solar policies in Colorado, New Mexico, Minnesota, Arizona, New Jersey and North Carolina.

But we have a long way to go to reach solar power’s true potential.

It’s time to go big on solar. If we take the right steps today, we can harness more power from the sun so we can finally leave dirty energy behind. The sky really is the limit.

Issue updates

Today marks the first official day of spring in the Northern Hemisphere. Known as the spring equinox because the day and night each last almost exactly 12 hours, it’s a cause for celebration for many who, like me, are eager to leave the cold and darkness of winter behind. This is also a great time for our communities to lean in and make the most of capturing the sun’s power with each growing day.

The University of California, Berkeley, will transition to 100 percent clean, renewable sources for all of its energy, including heating, transportation and electricity by 2050. This announcement builds on the commitment by the University of California system to purchase all of of its electricity from renewable sources by 2025.

The U.S. Department of Energy is holding a public meeting today on its plan to revoke Obama-era rules that required higher energy efficiency standards for lighting. The regulations, which had been scheduled to take effect in January 2020, would have saved twice as much energy as any other efficiency regulation in history. The light bulb standard rollback would result in an additional 34 million metric tons of climate-altering carbon dioxide by 2025.

On February 20th, a group of 45 city and state decision makers and clean energy advocates joined us for our webinar, “What a Solar Homes Policy Could do for Your Community.” Environment America’s Go Solar Campaign Director Bret Fanshaw summarized the findings of our recent report, Solar Homes: The Next Step for Clean Energy. Representatives from the California Solar and Storage Association and the City of South Miami, Florida, then spoke to their communities’ successes in making solar the default on new construction through statewide and municipal Solar Homes policies, respectively.